Kahlil Gibran's Lebanon and Syria

For more than a century, the real Kahlil Gibran has been waiting for you to meet him. Unlocked for the first time in this book are hundreds of his never-published stories of his homeland. Come meet Kahlil Gibran, a proud son of Lebanon.
The world knows Kahlil best as the author of The Prophet, the top-selling book of the Twentieth Century. But to his soulmate-friend, Mary Elizabeth Haskell, he talked about no subject more than he did about the geographic region that comprises modern Lebanon and Syria. For most of his adult life, while Kahlil painted and wrote, he fought tirelessly for the independence of his home from the Ottoman Empire. And now from Mary's private collection of letters and journals, many of which have waited a century to be published for the first time, is Kahlil's story of his Lebanon. From hundreds of preserved writings from 1910 through 1932 are his own stories of his efforts to secure freedom for his people, the history of the region and his love of his country. Kahlil's descriptions of Lebanon are uplifting and evocative: "In the valley [is Bsharri] - to the east up the steep hills to Mar Mema - just above the perpendicular cliff is a waterfall - in the most mysterious valley I know. Only at midday the sun shines there for those high mountains on the east. Halfway up the cliff, black scratches mark caves cut in the rock by prehistoric Phoenician folk and carved within by them with God figures primitive and beautiful in the Egyptian way. In the spring, the fields and slopes are white with flowers and the wind at dawn blowing down, goes over them, fills [Bsharri] with their fragrance for two or three weeks in the spring - every day. I believe this is one of the things that make the people of northern Lebanon religious." (June 1911) And his fight for Lebanon was heartbreaking: "News from Syria and Mt. Lebanon are more than one can bear. It all seems like one long, black dream - and sometimes I feel quite lost." (February 1917) For those who love Kahlil, this book is the opportunity to get to know him best: as a son of Lebanon.